AI that mimics a real human’s personality, mannerisms, etc. Making a replacement human possible.

But then maybe it is or it turns evil.

Gives you an opportunity to include a Barry/nostr:npub18zj5ygv8pkdk07hyddjtks9tduk67k9k4s8ezs7wrkzu85mu6rxq4zz5tz cameo.

Genetic selection on birth, engineering babies, neurolink as a wealth divide, those who have and those who have not. All the drawbacks like unknown cancers popping up at 20 for engineering DNA. And sideloading ads or hacking peoples brains. Engineering discoveries of materials you can control gravity similar to conductivity in metals. Data markets where you you buy and sell CDAs of data differentiated by pristine data that is AI free to triple C that is only AI manipulated data.

Good luck in your work 😉

Upside:

1. Nuclear Energy

2. Energy Storage

2. Wearable smart materials

3. Human-Computer integration, Neural Prosthetic (Cyborgish, if biological computers aren't being developed in parallel )

4. AI (more of an obvious choice)

Cultural differences of a species because they lived in different countries similar to

How we have between countries.

Ron Herbert already shot his shot about the AI problem, I think it was a well considered conclusion

really, i think the A gives it all away. Artificial... not just "crafted" but "fake", ersatz

i'm not saying that machines can't do useful things with ideas, they just can't do thinking because they aren't alive, struggling with existence and trying to condense all that experiential, subjective entropy into something that solves that problem

that is the key thing - without a survival instinct, and a lot of seemingly irrelevant shit to deal with, it's not really intelligent, it's just clever

Tech like AI and biotech could be exponential…particular this protein design for age reversal. Plenty of money in that area….oh and AI driven governance systems.

Material science could upend everything in construction….and stealth tech stuff.

I’ve also read about these room temp semi-conductors that could completely change energy transmission.

I think space colonisation and quantum computing might be a disappointing development.

Pharma and AI for biology will not advance as quickly as seems to be consensus imo. That isn’t to say there won’t be progress, there will. But legacy discovery pipelines will take longer to replace than people think for a variety of reasons.

AI is heavily data dependent. Everyone saw the impact of Alphafold and overextrapolated the knock on effects for the rest of biotech. However, Alphafold is an exception that proved the rule. The protein data bank was exceptionally well structured, narrowly defined, and large. The ~123k structures in the PDB sample a significant fraction of the most relevant and easy to crystallize protein structures, so out of distribution structure are difficult to characterize and invalidate model predictions. AI is great at interpolating within a data distribution, and so predicting new easy-to-crystallize structures was bound to work eventually. No other database for biochemistry or cell biology is even close to as densely sampled, organized, or defined.

The main limitation is that large biochemical systems are incredibly difficult to simulate AND interrogate. The tools are bad, the readouts are bad, and the combinatorial explosion of interaction space is impossible to simulate on classical systems. Even though sequencing based technologies have revealed a lot of new biology, they are a static and destructive endpoint. I fear that it may be near-impossible and scientifically important to get a comprehensive spatial measurement over time in the same system.

The last limitation I’ll mention is that every discovery in pharma makes subsequent discoveries more difficult (referred to as eroom’s law). This is fundamentally at odds with normal tech and suggests hard limits on our ability to interrogate living systems. If this proves true, progress in biology will lag worse than people expect.

What I think will happen is better scientific automation. “AI scientists” will automate hypothesis generation and testing. Robotics will automate and scale up brute force screening. Humans will build better in vitro models (e.g. organoids) and better measurement tools. Testing will get cheaper as tech gets better — trial and error can scale up a few more orders of magnitude. What do we get from this? There will probably a few more “wonder drugs” where we don’t understand the complete mechanism but trials demonstrate efficacy. I suspect dietary science will be a significant beneficiary from cheaper testing (democratizing access to pharma scale resources for less profitable applications).

I'm here for Lyn diving into materials science. 🔬 😊 🤘

Everything is made of something.

VR, Quantum, Fusion will surprise to the downside.

Nature and live music will continue to surprise to the upside.

So, I was reading the Dan Simmons books, Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion.

Depending on what your theme of the sci Fi book here's something to think about:

Hyperion is about a ton of planets multiple light years away from each other. And as each one gets teleportation gates, before it's operational mechanics/engineers have to travel the light years to install them. So everyone is aging around them as they "hop" through time going to various planets to install these gates.

He never mentions their monetary system in the books but as I was reading it... There would HAVE to be some kind of fixed system. You can't offer someone $X if they won't even be able to spend it for 20 years without it maintaining and/or gaining in purchasing power. No mechanic would sacrifice 20 years for one dollar amount but end up with half that by the time they can spend it.

I know you already think of money Lyn but it's something that has bugged me when reading science fiction. There needs to be some kind of explanation of how it works. Because everyone just uses the short cut of, "universal credits" but still controlled by the hegemony. Seems like a glaring plot hole to me.

I expect umbrellas to continue to go strong.

I think materials science, biology and chemistry all hit the same wall. We have a problem in understanding particle physics. It’s not obvious when this is, but progress won’t be a simple function of available compute although everyone seems a little drunk on it right now.

Spice-enabled space travel, but only after we galactically ban AI 😏

Physical travel between stars is so slow, it'll only happen once - the first wave of colonists spreading outwards from some origin will be von Neumann-like probes. Unlike popular conception of these probes as big machines, I believe they would be nanomachines traveling at substantial fractions of light speed, launched using synchrotrons [Liu's "Three Body Trilogy"]. They only need a way to slow down at their destinations. After a brief pause to establish themselves, they "reproduce" and set out for the next star systems [Hanson's "grabby aliens"] pretty much spreading at close to the speed of light.

Subsequent travel between colonised star systems need not be physical, but merely information and AI programs transmitted at light speed between established outposts and probes in transit [also explored elsewhere in the TV show Altered Carbon].

Also implicit in this future are Drexler style nanomachines, likely merged with biological systems with no obvious boundaries between mechanosynthesis and biochemistry.

Also implied: an earlier AI "apocalypse" as machines replace/merge with humans (or biological aliens elsewhere in other star systems) at rapid rates upon achieving sentience (possibly even as quickly as overnight). [Yudkhowsky et al]

A possible scenario for alien contact is initial establishment of contact remotely through radio, followed by negotiations of terms for trade, terms of surrender, merger etc, and finally updates to the source codes of both civilisations. No space battles or other kinetic "negotiations", except in rare cases of a communication breakdown (or where one side refuses to negotiate for some reason?).

Good Luck on the project! Eagerly anticipated. What a great topic to put your dab hand to.

Si nos detenemos en la Filosofía de la élite TESCREAL. Todos los que estamos leyendo este hilo nunca veremos ni llegaremos al futuro.

1. Somos escoria que contamina el planeta y hay que eliminar

eliminar

2. Las élites se quieren perpetuar en un "Homo Optimus": Eugenistas

3. Van a crear una nueva raza de humano aumentados; Cyborg.

...

🔊 Los demás estamos en vías de extinción ¿Acaso no lo veis⁉️🥲

Sounds fun. About to finish Broken money nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a , massive fun of your work. Still sorry the words “Check your financial privilege” didn’t stick through in the bitcoin verse

Something I always loved about Dune was the lack of AI. Futuristic caveman sort of combat. Sometimes AI makes things too easy; doesn't add enough color to the little things.

I feel like it's either all in or nothing. AI controls every aspect of life, or has been completely destroyed on purpose.

That’s awesome Lyn! Sci-fi author here (yes bitcoin allowed me to fulfill that dream).

To quote Frederick Pohl “great sci-fi doesn’t just predict the automobile, it describes the traffic jam.”

So you’re on the right track. If you ever want to talk shop don’t hesitate to reach out.

One other piece of advice I’d offer is to not gloss over characterization. Sci-fi is the “literature of ideas” but the audience can only really engage with the cool tech/worlds if they relate to the characters.

This is hard to do but worth it. And there are some straightforward techniques to make characters better. Happy to share.

Finally, editing if your friend. My book went through 11 drafts before publication. While that sounds daunting, each iteration gets easier and the output improves substantially. Don’t get discouraged.

Oh one final final thing, you need to be ruthless about putting together your editorial team (developmental, copy and proofreaders). They are so essential to a book’s success and too many authors skimp here.

Lets hope they make better space food for astronauts and interplanetary spaceflights🤞🏼🤞🏼

upside: agriculture, medicine and entertainment technology (for adults)

downside: space and flying cars

I honestly think it depends on whether we're able to shift the prevailing understanding of foundational physics, i.e., overcome materialism. I think if the materialist scientific priesthood begins to breakdown, new technologies will arise that nobody could predict.

This sounds very exciting!

VR is being totally underestimated. Humanity will dive deeper into virtual worlds than we will reach out to the universe.

Nanobot medicine/supplements for wellness and performance enhancement.

Remote killing machines.

Wait, what? Ur writing a sci-fi book? 🤯

Tattoos on human skin that are scannable QR code chip embeds.

Giant pyramid-shaped energy generators that secure a worldwide telepathic information network

A combo of both movies Minority Report and Idiocracy

I think we will start to see real progress again in the physical world (not just digital) better air and land transportation, energy infrastructure, and environmental geo-engineering… (weather/climate control) and of course medical educational and housing … all these things have lagged progress vs the digital realm but they need not. Just requires a change in societal attitudes… we will see.

How about DNA as data storage :

Storing data in DNA is a groundbreaking approach with numerous advantages over traditional storage methods. Here’s why researchers and technologists are exploring this field:

1. High Density

• DNA is incredibly compact. One gram of DNA can theoretically store 215 petabytes (215 million gigabytes) of data. This makes it far denser than current storage media like hard drives or SSDs.

2. Longevity

• DNA can last for thousands of years if stored properly. Unlike hard drives or magnetic tapes that degrade over a few decades, DNA’s stability offers a long-term solution for archival data.

3. Durability

• DNA is a stable molecule that can withstand extreme conditions, such as temperature and radiation, much better than electronic storage media.

4. Low Maintenance

• Unlike data centers that require constant energy for cooling and operation, DNA storage needs minimal energy after encoding and can simply be kept in a cool, dry environment.

5. Scalability

• As digital data continues to grow exponentially (e.g., from IoT devices, social media, etc.), traditional storage technologies are struggling to keep pace. DNA offers a potential way to scale data storage far beyond current limits.

6. Sustainability

• DNA storage could be more environmentally friendly. Data centers consume massive amounts of electricity, contributing to carbon emissions. DNA data storage could reduce this demand significantly.

7. Universality

• DNA is a universal storage medium because the same biological principles apply everywhere. It is possible to recover information as long as the reader knows the genetic code format.

8. Future-Proof

• DNA as a medium is not likely to become obsolete, as it is a fundamental part of biology. Unlike electronic formats that change over time, the way DNA encodes information will always be relevant.

Use Case for Books

Storing books in DNA symbolizes the preservation of human knowledge in a durable, compact, and future-proof format. Libraries, governments, or archives could preserve entire literary collections in a test tube, ensuring that our cultural heritage survives potential digital or physical catastrophes.

Challenges

Despite the potential, there are challenges:

1. Cost: Encoding and decoding DNA are currently expensive and slow.

2. Error Rates: DNA synthesis and sequencing aren’t perfect, leading to errors in data retrieval.

3. Read/Write Speeds: DNA data retrieval is much slower compared to electronic methods.

Outlook

Advances in biotechnology are rapidly improving the efficiency and affordability of DNA data storage, making it a plausible long-term solution for humanity’s ever-growing data needs.

With implants you could technically have telepathy